Earlier this week, Elon Musk tweeted an emoji of a white rabbit and told people to follow it … Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D., explained that Musk was “explicitly” encouraging his 120 million followers to start following QAnon, “a domestic terrorism movement.” An explicit directive to follow QAnon would have gone something like, “Follow QAnon,” but she doubled down, revealing that Musk was using “memetic warfare” to conceal his creation of a network to organize violence.
QAnon is most commonly associated with “Pizzagate,” which held that there was a pedophile ring being run out of a D.C. pizza shop. We’ve heard quite a bit about QAnon lately as the public at large cracks down on child exploitation: When people called out Balenciaga for its ad campaign pairing little children with teddy bears dressed in BDSM gear, three New York Times style writers placed part of the blame for the backlash on QAnon and Fox News. “When High Fashion and QAnon Collide” was the title of the piece.
Now Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo is calling #TwitterFiles journalist Matt Taibbi “pizzagate curious.”
Instead of chasing child sex predators or terrorists, the FBI has agents — lots of them — analyzing and mass-flagging social media posts. Not as part of any criminal investigation, but as a permanent, end-in-itself surveillance operation. People should not be okay with this.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 16, 2022
Taibbi now officially pizzagate curious https://t.co/1LFgz9Ymr9
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 16, 2022
We already knew you were a little icky, Josh, but wow
— Latentem (@Latentem) December 17, 2022
Josh, earlier this year I interviewed an FBI agent literally pulled off a child exploitation detail to chase misdemeanor J6 cases. Here the point is agents flagging social media instead of real work. This makes me “Pizzagate-curious”? How desperate for a point can you get? https://t.co/3k9g6I9RyO
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 17, 2022
How many FBI agents are devoted to solving the murders of 4 college kids in Idaho?
80 full time agents were assigned to Twitter.
How many to Facebook, Google?— Sandy 〽️ (@RightGlockMom) December 17, 2022
Didn’t they send 15 FBI agents to investigate the “noose” in Bubba Wallace’s garage?
Josh is ratio-curious: he is curious how quickly Matt’s QT can ratio him.
— Justin (@Aristofoneez) December 17, 2022
Establish branding, reinforce the messaging over months, and it then becomes a useful shorthand label you can slap on anything that can't be argued away.
— Varkie (@VarkieLiefe) December 17, 2022
Oddly enough, this type of FBI behavior is what leads to the kind of distrusting environment that births the same conspiracy theories they’d later be monitoring.
— A (@pleibian) December 17, 2022
Josh is about as useful and insightful as Olbermann at this point in history.
— please don't follow (@Shimrod23) December 17, 2022
That’s how they try to shut people down, Matt. I’m so tired of it. Never have I seen a more cultish group than they … so those are the words they use. No thoughtful dialogue … just hateful words.
— Laura KBB (@NonsenseEnd) December 17, 2022
It’s a pretty simple and proveable statement. Every cop camping behind a tree for a speed trap is a cop that could be actually fighting crime. No different here.
— FrankJay (@fjs_ig) December 17, 2022
Kind of like how you’re groomer adjacent, Josh?
— Conspiracy Theorist Expert (@FBITwat) December 17, 2022
That's quite a leap you are making there. Christ almighty.
— Milkbone (@clarksthockey) December 16, 2022
Forgot how defensive libs get when people accuse pedos. Kind of weird.
— Pedro (@PluisPedro) December 17, 2022
Wow… that’s you’re takeaway ?
— Xakattak (@zachmoos) December 17, 2022
"The FBI telling Twitter to delete parody accounts is good, actually. And we knew this all along. Anyone reporting on it must have lost their mind"
— Alice (@AliceFromQueens) December 17, 2022
Maybe Marshall needs to have another look at the latest batch of #TwitterFiles to see just how closely the FBI was policing low-follower parody accounts. QAnon’s just a label liberals use to get conservatives to shut up.
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Related:
LOL: Everyone is making fun of TPM’s Josh Marshall for TWEETING about his Mastodon herdhttps://t.co/Z7UPpJ8NUg
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 17, 2022
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